"York is beautiful and you have a responsibility to make it more beautiful"

BILL Bryson has never made any secret of his love for all things British. The endearingly bumbling writer from Des Moines in Iowa (an unlikely birthplace for an Anglophile, if ever there was) wrote about it movingly in his book Notes From A Small Island.

"Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realised what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it," he wrote. "Every last bit of it, good and bad - old churches, country lanes, people saying 'Mustn't grumble' and 'I'm terribly sorry but,' people apologising to me when I conk them with a careless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, tea and crumpets, summer showers and foggy winter evenings - every bit of it."

Only a foreigner - and probably only an American - could have written that. If one of our own had penned it, we would have told them off (with typical British self-mockery) for being sentimental and up themselves. But when a foreigner appreciates us in that way - well, how many of us can honestly say our eyes don't mist up just a little in gratitude?

For all these reasons, it seemed only right when we as a nation returned the compliment by inviting our favourite American - who, let's not forget, spent many years living with his family in North Yorkshire - to become a commissioner with one of our most important conservation bodies, English Heritage.

There may have been a few dissenting voices who objected to an American telling us how we should look after our own landscape and heritage, but they were remarkably few and the author has no time for them. Sometimes, he points out, it takes someone with an outside perspective to see clearly what needs to be done.

Bryson has always been the most English of Americans. When he was approached by English Heritage, he says with true Brit dry humour, it was the "first time anyone had ever treated me as a grown up. The first time I was given a real responsibility and had to put a tie on and everything". Is that really an American speaking?

He had never been afraid to speak out about the threat to the British landscape. In 1998, three years after he had left his beloved Yorkshire Dales to return to the US, he denounced the march of electricity pylons through the Vale of York.

"They are so intrusive, it is outrageous," he told the Evening Press. "Nothing buggers up the British landscape more than a string of pylons."

Since moving back to England with his family in 2003 (he now lives in Norfolk) and taking up his English Heritage role, he has been equally vocal, fronting an EH campaign to remove the clutter from our streets.

"We are setting out to restore dignity and character to England's historic streets, largely by removing the blight of unnecessary signs, poles, bollards, barriers, hotchpotch paving schemes and obtrusive road markings under which they are fast disappearing," he told journalists.

Today, the author will be returning to York for the first time in five years or so - appropriately enough, to address a conference on conservation.

Architects, conservationists, historians and council staff from all over the country will be descending on York over the next three days to take part in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation's annual conference. Bryson is to give the keynote speech tomorrow morning. And all the signs are that he has lost none of his passion.

There is almost nothing that is going to have a more lasting impact on the quality of the environment people live in than architecture, he says, speaking on the telephone from his Norfolk home. And we Brits have a duty to realise how lucky we are.

"When you have a country that's as beautiful and well-decorated as this one, you have a particular responsibility," he says. "A city like York is really beautiful, and you have a responsibility to make it more beautiful. You have a fabulous, world class city, and if you live in a place like York you have a responsibility to put up first rate architecture."

That's a lot of responsibilities. But then it irks him when we Brits take our landscape and heritage for granted - as we do, sometimes. He remembers going to Durham Cathedral once: a magnificent example of church architecture which attracts some 500,000 visitors a year.

"And seven out of eight of them left less than £1 in the collecting box," he says. "One third left less than one penny."

It is not because we're all cheapskates, he stresses. "I believe they just don't realise how much help these buildings need." So while he is not necessarily in favour of the kind of mandatory charging brought in at York Minster, he does think people lucky enough to live in a country such as Britain have a duty to look after what keeps it special.

One of the things he first fell in love with about Britain, he says, was the way in which over the centuries the people who lived here had taken a naturally attractive landscape and added to it by what they built - whether that was churches, dry stone walls, or old stone bridges.

"Almost everything that human beings did to it (apart from in the 20th century) has made it more beautiful," he says. "This is a fantastic inheritance that everybody alive gets to enjoy, and so we do have responsibilities to pass that on. These things are really, really important and it is sad to see them taken for granted."

There are something like 17,000 listed buildings across Britain that are at risk. "These are buildings of national importance, and they are falling down because there is not the funding or the will to save them."

Things are improving, he admits. There was a tendency after the war to pull down old buildings and replace them with ugly modern building - excrescences such as Stonebow. Now, he says, thanks to organisations such as English Heritage, the National Trust and other smaller conservation bodies, the British are now much more aware of the importance of our heritage - and why slapping a new concrete building in a historic street such as Stonegate, for example, would be simply unacceptable.

He is not against new buildings where they complement the existing architecture. "In London, you only have to look at the Tower of London in the foreground and the gherkin in the background to see it can work." But it is all about the quality and intelligence that goes into design - and about assessing old buildings properly to see whether they can be made use of before simply pulling them down.

We are getting better at doing that, he says - just as, thanks to the efforts of conservation organisations, we are learning as a nation to value our priceless heritage.

Which is not to say the conservation movement couldn't do better. That will be one of his themes tomorrow.

"There is an incredible number of organisations involved with heritage, so many different bodies such as English Heritage, the Victorian Society, the National Trust, and I find that they don't always work together as well as they could do," he says. "I think more effort needs to be put into that. Because one thing about old buildings is, they just keep on getting older as they get older, and they are expensive to maintain."

We know all about that in York. If ever there was an obvious city to host a national conference on conservation, it is this one. Bryson admits he is pleased about the location of the conference because it will give him a chance to catch up with a city he loves but hasn't visited for several years.

"I'm hoping I'll get to York early enough to have a good walk around," he says mischievously. "I want to see what you've got on with in my absence."

Any city planners willing to give him the guided tour?

:: Speaking up for conservation

THE three-day Institute of Historic Building Conservation (IHBC) conference opens today with architects, conservation planners, engineers, surveyors and consultants from across the country being taken on a three-hour guided tour of York.

Tomorrow, the main theme will be the building materials - lime, brick stone and timber - used in conservation. It is, admits Keith Knight, York-based historic buildings architect and IHBC Yorkshire Branch council member, a pretty dry subject - but important nevertheless.

Those working in conservation have to be knowledgeable about materials so that when builders turn around and tell them a particular type of brick or stone is no longer available, they can argue back, he jokes.

"You have to know more than they do!"

On Saturday, the focus of the conference will shift to making our environment - whether in the city, town or village - more pleasant. This will include looking at everything from village design to English Heritage's plan to de-clutter our urban streets.

On Sunday, delegates will be visiting a North Yorkshire market town, either Ripon or Malton.

The aim of the annual conference - which is held in a different place each year - is for those working in the field of conservation to meet up to share best practice, and to see how conservation policies are being applied on the ground in the city or area where that year's conference is being held.

Updated: 10:37 Thursday, July 07, 2005